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Aspiration and Dispensing of Biological Liquids in the Micro- and Submicroliter Range with High Precision

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Abstract

This paper describes the design and the fabrication as well as the measurement results of a new micropipetting device designed for the pipetting of biological liquids in the micro- and submicroliter range. The device is a modular set-up including a precision pipetting head with two integrated sensors realized in silicon bulk micromachining and a coupled piezo disk-type actuator to fulfil the force and stroke requirements for fast pipetting. With this device we have pipetted water from 0.4 to 2.7 μl and serum from 0.45 μl to 3.1 μl. The measurements were undertaken in open-loop mode and the coefficients of variation for repeated pipetting cycles were below 4%. Due to the integrated sensors the system can be expanded to a closed-loop system to compensate for the piezoactuator's hysteresis and drift, thus further increasing precision and accuracy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Mechanical Systems, ETH Zurich, Tannenstrasse 3, CH-8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Nicolas Szita & Jurg Dual

  2. Institute of Microsystemstechnology, Interstate University of Applied Science Buchs, Werdenbergstrasse 4, CH-9471, Buchs, Switzerland

    Rudolf A. Buser

Authors
  1. Nicolas Szita
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  2. Rudolf A. Buser
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  3. Jurg Dual
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Szita, N., Buser, R.A. & Dual, J. Aspiration and Dispensing of Biological Liquids in the Micro- and Submicroliter Range with High Precision. Biomedical Microdevices 3, 175–182 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011482407399

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011482407399

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